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Riff   /rɪf/   Listen
Riff

noun
1.
A Berber living in northern Morocco.  Synonym: Riffian.
2.
A jazz ostinato; usually provides a background for a solo improvisation.





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"Riff" Quotes from Famous Books



... to the camp, anxious to know what had happened. She found a testy little company. For two hours they had been struggling in the dark with tents and waiting for the carts and for a policeman, as all the riff-raff of the town was ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... quack lavished his good-byes upon the landlord and the "riff-raff" who gathered to welcome the coming or speed the parting guest at the door of the country tavern. He drove a pair of beautiful, spirited horses, and had the satisfaction of knowing that he excited the envy of every ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... were found to be delightful. Let no playwright, then, make it his boast that he cannot disburden his soul within the three hours' limit, and cannot produce plays intelligible or endurable to any audience but a band of adepts. A popular audience, however, does not necessarily mean the mere riff-raff of the theatrical public. There is a large class of playgoers, both in England and America, which is capable of appreciating work of a high intellectual order, if only it does not ignore the fundamental ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... of resemblance to that "white trash" which has come to be a recognizable strain of the English race; and one cannot help suspecting that while the New England colonies made every effort to keep out such riff raff, it may nevertheless have now and then crept in. However this may be, it cannot be said that this element ever formed a noticeable feature in the life of colonial New England. As regards their social ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... said Mr. Billings, with the voice of experience. "The crews on those old tramps are the riff-raff of a hundred ports. Bad men to handle ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... oral substitutes for kitchenware. "Ye can apollygise to riff-raff of the streets for settin' yer unhandy feet on the tails of their frocks, but ye'd walk on the neck of yer wife the length of a clothes-line without so much as a 'Kiss me fut,' and I'm sure it's that long from rubberin' out the windy for ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... Warrington. But over here that signifies nothing; might just as well be Jones or Smith or Brown. We call him Parrot & Co., but the riff-raff have another name for him. The Man Who Never Talked of Home. For two or three seasons he's been going up and down the river. Ragged at times, prosperous at others. Lately it's been rags. He's always carrying that Rajputana parrot. You've seen the kind around ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... to be forgiven by her; who acted always on her instinct and never on her reason; who cared nothing for legal principles; who openly used her feminine influence with the Trinity; who filled heaven with riff-raff; and who had never on any pretext driven a soul out of heaven. Christine made peace with this jealous and divine creature. She felt unmistakably that she was forgiven for her infidelity due to the Infant in the darkness beyond ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett


Words linked to "Riff" :   peruse, riffle, spiel, play, Berber, leaf, ostinato


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